1998

Victor Manning continued orbiting my solar system like a distant insignificant planet. He was not my sun, or my moon, or my north star but more like Pluto – an obscure and questionable acquaintance who I was dimly aware of but seldom made a difference in my life. Life and development had been good to him, what had started out as a smooth and attractive boy had slowly morphed into a muscular and handsome young man. Clocking in a six-foot two, he was an Adonis with hair so black that it stood out starkly against his skin. His eyes were still and always would be a rich brown, down-turned, a sharp contrast against the chiseled jaw. Yet it wasn't so much how he looked; it was how he walked. He became one of those people that early on realize they are worthy of love and attention. He was good at sports; his large body was ripe for High School football and it was his name that was chanted on Friday Nights.

Our paths diverged at some point but not too far. It took me a bit longer to find my own group, my own solace, and the girl who had come from Miami in winds and destruction was soon gone replaced by a bright and shiny disposition. I had polished myself. A lot had to do with friends, I now had friends, I was part of a vital nucleus of people.

During that time my heart was placed firmly in the unwilling hands Clemente Cruz, the star of the baseball team. Clem was my closest orbiting moon, the path of my life, the compass that guided me in each step of my day. It was not love, I was not capable of it, but it was obsession and like most obsessions I did not see anything of the bad. According to most, Clem was ugly, but it didn't matter to me, my heart beat solely for him and the small moments that he would spare me a glance. Clemente Cruz literally floated on a cloud; he had more talent than any other boy in our school and just being around him made me break out in cold sweat. It was rumored that Clem was being scouted by the Tampa Bay Rays, even in high school. He was that good. Legendary, at age seventeen.

"He looks like Arnold," Yahaira said. She rolled her eyes and studied the cuticles of her nails.

"He does not."

I watched Clem cross the basketball court to joke with Victor. They greeted each other as young men did; slap, curl, chest press, release. The homogeneity of it all lost on them, their ease friendly and open like boys who have never questioned their sexuality. Touching was not uncomfortable, and smiles were easy and delightful.

"Yes, from Hey Arnold." Yara laughed and tossed her thick bleached blonde hair over her shoulder. She was so beautiful it hurt at times to look at her. Her eyes were wide and turned colors depending on her mood and for whatever reason two years ago we had become the closest of friends. I felt like a rolling sausage next to her and she would clutch at me and assure me that beauty always came after High School. It was easy for her to say, if she had wanted Clem, she would've gotten him.

I turned back to Clem, his long legs encased in jeans, his blond hair slicked back. Why couldn't Yara see how sexy he was? How the paths of lights moved around him? The years and hours spent swinging bats had carved out of the boy a hard man from the squared jaw to the sinewy forearms. He was edged perfection, sprinkled with a bit of danger that called to my placid and stable life. He was Mr. Rochester and Yara would not know because she had refused to watch the film. My eyes must have glassed over because Yara's laugher broke through my thoughts and it captured the boys' attention.

"You are ridiculous," she said.

"Shit, they're looking at us!"

My stomach erupted in pain. I had nothing to say to him, no clever and witty statement. Nothing. Victor turned and waved sardonically and I responded by flicking him off which only served to make him grin.

I'll pause and explain how my relationship with Victor had evolved from the moment I had called him a messenger boy. I hated him and he delighted in the prospect of angering me. We avoided one another, specifically, I avoided him. He didn't care and I wasn't important enough in his life to consider me at all. But in the moments which he remembered me he delighted in teasing me and watching my face redden. The problem, at this very moment, was that he had been the one to realize that my heart beat for Clem in a trotting and desperate manner. He had caught me staring dreamily at Clem during a party last November and ever since then he had a knowing smirk planted on his stupid face that made me want to hit him with a ruler in a way he wouldn't like.

The boys could smell the pheromones in the air, and they started walking towards us. My body froze, rigid and tight. Worse than having nothing to say to Clem was having nothing to say to Clem in front of Victor. He'd delight in watching me squirm, watching me slowly decay.

"Relax," Yara's syrupy voice said.

It was easy for Yara to say that, she had not yet lost her heart and would not for a few years. She casually leaned back and smacked her gum as I attempted to emulate her relaxed position on the bleachers. I could smell the scent of boy before they arrived, the citric muskiness of it, of the freshly showered and the tinge of teenage sweat that they could not control. I wondered what it would be like to wake to that scent, to let it encase you, but I had yet to be naked with a boy and all my free time was spent imagining the picturesque act.

I bid my heart to calm down, but the truth was that I lived for each moment Clem even spared me a glance. The moments were seldom but they did happen, but he never did anything other than stare and I wondered at his stare. Why would he stare?

"Ladies," Victor said. "Are you and your girls coming tonight?"

I refused to look at Victor, I'd rather look at vomit.

Yara shrugged, glancing at the court where the basketball team would soon show up. She was currently in a tumultuous mess with Devone Roberts, meaning that he was crazy about her and she wasn't sure if she was crazy about him. But all the boys were crazy about Yahaira Martinez, she was Homecoming Queen with a tiny pert body that showcased her Caribbean curves and had a dimpled smile enchanting and coy. She had the uncanny ability to flirt without saying a word, something that would take me years to master.

I felt Clem's eyes on me but when I looked at him, he looked away. The problem really was that he stared, it was the seedling to a tree that had grown in me. Each stare a bit of water, not too much, but a steady trickle.

"We might," Yara said.

Victor's ridiculous grin was in my field of vision which I ignored in the same manner that I had ignored him for the rest of 7th grade English. His large foot landed next to me and he leaned in. I froze perfectly still and slowly looked at him.

"Clem, doesn't Becka look good today?" Victor said.

He was awful, absolutely awful and I felt my face flush in mortification. My breath shortened and I met his eyes in pure defiance.

"Yeah, well if you all come that's good, we need more girls there," Clem scratched at his chin. He barely spared me a glance as he slid his sunglasses on his face. A pack of giggling freshmen girls entered the gym and his attention was quickly diverted.

"We'll talk to the girls," Yara said. Noncommittal, that was part of Yara's perfected magic.

"Yeah, tell Rosalind I say what's up," Victor bit his lower lip.

Clem crackled laughing, a little joke between the two of them.

"You tell her yourself, asshole," Yara said.

She also disliked Victor, we were a unit on this topic, she liked her guys with a bit of vulnerability and Victor had none. But poor Rosalind. It was no secret that Rosalind lived in love with Victor Manning and though he appreciated the soft prettiness of Rosalind, he seldom tied himself down to a girl, much less a girl who wouldn't sleep with him on the first date. But he sure loved flirting with her. The way I saw the scenario it was all a little play he acted. He liked that girls liked him, he liked when people stopped to stare at him, in short – he liked the attention. His chest would poof like a bird in mating season, a cocky cock with bright feathers to entice the females. He was truly a Mr. Wickham.

"Always charming, Yahaira," Victor snipped. He turned to leave but first glanced at me and I met his eyes with a sneer. "Becka, you should definitely come. Who knows, you might meet the love of your life there."

I smiled at him. "Oh, but you're already taken. With syphilis."

The laughter that came out of Clem stunned me and my heart cracked wide open at the thought that I'd made him laugh. Victor eyed me once over but I kept myself steady, he would not win this round or any round hereafter. He jutted out his chin and smirked, his square jaw suddenly making him quite attractive as he nodded at me. Well played, it said.

Then they turned and jogged down to meet the freshmen who eagerly captured their attention. I let out a breath and found Yara smiling, amused at our interaction.

"I take it we are going to this party," I said.

"Oh yes." Yara stood up and dusted her white shorts. "Let's go find the girls."

×××

They called us the Patty Girls and the reason we were called the Patty Girls was because of one person; Gil Jacobs. Gil was the only guy in our grade that was openly out of the closet. One day, when he ran into us laughing and walking the hallway, he had shouted "Here come the Patty Girls" and it had stuck. What Patty meant, we didn't know, but there was a sense of pride knowing that you are recognized for being part of a group. A unit. It was not a bad group to be in, on the contrary, for whatever reason we had become desirable. Gil would happily take credit for patenting that name for the rest of his life.

Sometime around the end of Freshman year my social life had drastically improved when I met Yara and through her came Mercy and Mercy brought Rosalind. So our little quartet knitted closer and closer together until by senior year we were inseparable. You could not find one without the other and the bonds which I formed those years taught me all I needed to know about the female friendship. It was hard work, it was compromise, it was harder to maintain than any male relationship. We needed care and attention, companionship and space. It was a multitude of balances all walking the tight rope of teenage hormones.

Yahaira, our homecoming Queen, bold and magnetic, greeted everyone, everyone knew her, and there was just something incredibly alluring in the manner which she included you making feel you were vital. Despite all the attention it didn't make her self-centered, she nourished us and made sure we were invited to everything she was, she glued us together like a mother hen.

Now, Rosalind Jameson was delicate and sweet. Her short red hair had a natural curl to it, and she had the right number of freckles to deem them pretty, like Molly Ringwald in that Breakfast movie. She dressed very feminine, in soft mauves and dainty gold jewelry. Rosalind was also so goddamn innocent and pure that what she saw in the leper of Victor Manning was beyond me. She was the sole reason we attended football games, Yara wanted to make sure Rosalind had the chance to stare at Victor. Gag.

On the opposite spectrum was Mercy Torres. She was lean and muscular from the years kicking a soccer ball around and where Rosalind was delicate with her beauty, Mercy's was in your face. Bold and unrelenting with skin the permanent color of copper, and her eyes were a clear pale green that stood out stark and wondrous against her skin. Her hair was thick, long, straight, and pitch black. The kind of smooth hair that shone in the barest hint of sunlight. Despite her beauty, she was jaded and frightening to those that did not know her. Mercy cursed like a sailor and she was done with bullshit even at age seventeen. She was the only one of us that came from a single-parent household and she was crude to the bone. She had just dumped her boyfriend of two years, Pedro Sullivan, and when I asked her if she was OK she had stuck a lollipop in her mouth and smiled. She said 'free at last'.

There were times when I watched the three of them and wondered exactly where I fit in this Patty Girl puzzle. It was true that I had slightly improved from previous years in the way most people do as puberty slowly unclenched its claws from our throats to reveal a slightly less ridiculous persona than the one before. I had been allowed to have contact lenses and my teeth had been released from the confines of bracers revealing teeth that were more or less straight. I was not delicate like Rosalind, beautiful like Mercy, or desired like Yara. Most of the time you could find me with my head stuck in a romance novel.

I am embarrassed to admit that I had come to be known as 'Big Titties Becka' – because, predictably, I had been cursed with big boobs. It seemed that guys had suddenly realized that mine were larger than average and this took me from girlfriend material and firmly placed me in 'side-chick' camp. An object of lustful fantasies that they never took to the movies but always tried to flirt with. I was also slightly bigger (fatter) than the rest of the girls, but the only thing the boys noticed was my boobs. It was at a level of fetishism. Nothing fit the way it did on my friends, buttons strained against the onslaught of extra flesh and more than once, while running to Economics, I had caused a scene when boys stopped to watch me run. You'd think my boobs would get me a date with Clem Cruz but no. He enjoyed watching them same as the other guys but other than speaking to me on rare occasions, he had no time for me.

After leaving Clem and Victor, we convened at our usual spot; the third red pillar by Mr. Braggs chemistry class.

"Are we going to this ridiculous party?" Mercy was hoisting her gym back over her shoulders.

"Victor and Clem asked if we would go," Yara said.

Rosalind turned to me with wide eyes. "Did you speak to Clem?"

"No." Yara twisted her mass of bleached curls on the top of her head. "She stared at him with her heart eyes until Victor acted the ass."

"He is an ass." I watched Rosalind blush prettily knowing full well she did not agree on our assessment.

"So we're going to this ridiculous party." Mercy said and cracked her neck.

Recommended 90s Playlist (will grow with each chapter)

1. Gettin' Jiggy With It - Will Smith

2. Kiss The Rain - Billie Myers